Stephen Gregory is an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Languages and Linguistics at the University of New South Wales, Australia. His recent research into culture and politics includes papers on Mario Benedetti, Jorge Luis Borges, and the collaboration of Wim Wenders and Ry Cooder.

Beginning in the year Uruguayans elected a different party into
government for the first time in nearly a century, the author examines
intellectuals’ role in the Uruguayan left’s drive toward
unity and effectiveness. Discussion focuses on fragmentation and
impotence on the left; frustrated attempts at left unity in the
1960s; the creation of the centre-left Broad Front in 1971; and
the defeat of all left endeavours and all dialogue in the 1973 military
coup – a prelude to a twelve-year dictatorship in which the
military substituted themselves for intellectuals.

The story continues in 1985, reversing
the earlier trend in a record of dispersal and diversity. The author
details the initial post-authoritarian anarchic cultural outburst
– part celebration, part frustration; intellectuals’
role in the disputes that accompanied the Broad Front’s move
from democratic socialism to social democracy, and from opposition
to government in 2004; and recent excursions into the long-standing
Uruguayan obsession with its identity and viability as an independent
nation.

This book is essential reading
for all those interested in interplay between intellectuals and
politics in Latin America; changes in the Latin American left since
the 1960s; and the leftward drift of elected governments in the
Southern Cone.

Hardback ISBN:

978-1-84519-265-5

Hardback Price:

£25.00 / $35.00

Release Date:

March 2009

Page Extent / Format:

256 pp. / 229 x 152 mm

Illustrated:

No

Acknowledgements
Note on Translations and References

Introduction: Uruguay as a Question

Part One: Towards Intellectual and Political
Unity
1 From Alienation to Integration: Intellectuals, Politics
and Polemics
2 From FIDEL to the Frente: The Uruguayan Left Looks for Someone
to Talk to
3 Dialogue Engaged: The Frente Amplio as Coalition
Interlude: The Armed Forces and Failure

Part Two: Political Unity; Intellectual
Dispersal
4 The Revenge of the Foreign: Uruguay on the Eve of De(con)struction
5 Dialogue Resumed: Democracy, Intellectuals and the Frente
Amplio in Post-Dictatorship Uruguay
6 Dialogue Outside Politics: Uruguay as Problem in the Twenty-first
Century

Conclusion

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Via consideration of published scholarship and archival materials, Gregory (Univ.
of New South Wales, Australia) examines the evolution of intellectuals’
engagement in political life and public debate over an eventful
half century in Uruguay. This chronologically organized account
begins with the debates from the late 1950s through the early
1970s in which the Frente Amplio was established as a new
political movement. The second half of the book examines the
military dictatorship, the transition to democracy, and the
shift toward an increasingly electorally successful Frente
Amplio, culminating the Tabaré Vázquez’s
victory in the 2004 presidential election. Gregory’s
ambitious attempt to synthesize five decades of debate, literary
criticism, political mobilization, and political reorganization
in 159 pages makes this book more accessible to readers already
familiar with Uruguayan politics. Gregory’s monograph
is best suited for graduate students and faculty interested
in the interpretation of political texts.Choice

Gregory considers the half-century that began with
the election of the National Party – the first change
of ruling party in 90 years – and the victory of the
Frente Amplio government – the first by a center-left
party since the South American country gained independence
from Spain. His main argument is that during the 1960s, Uruguayan
intellectuals helped a fragmented left unify and broaden its
constituency with a new kind of politics built on consensus
and dialogue in an increasingly polarized society. Alas, the
effort foundered on the same widening social and political
rifts that led to the 1973 coup and 12 years of dictatorship,
he says, and relations between intellectuals and politics
after the return of democracy has taken two paths.Reference & Research Book News

Stephen Gregory’s book examines intellectual discourse and practice
in the politics of the demise and rebirth of Uruguay’s
democracy from the late 1950s until the beginning of the twenty-first
century and, as the title indicates, particularly the role
of intellectuals on the left of the ideological spectrum.Bulletin of Latin American Research

This book maps the relations between progressive
intellectuals and the left in Uruguay over the past half-century.
Starting in the late 1950s, at a time when the left was an
electorally marginal and politically divided force, it ends
with the groundbreaking electoral victory of the country’s
main left-wing party, the Frente Amplio (Broad Front),
in 2004. Appropriately enough, the story starts by quoting
an essay written in 1952 by Juan Flo, a young intellectual,
who after deriding fellow intellectuals for being hyper-critical
observers instead of active agents of social change raised
a question of quasi-Leninist resonance: “What shall we do,
then?” Flo’s answer to his own question was not entirely clear
at the time, but over the following two decades Uruguayan
intellectuals became important players in the country’s changing
political landscape.
... Progressive intellectuals, many of whom were contributors
to the highly influential weekly periodical Marcha,
played a significant role in the negotiations that led to
the foundation of the Frente Amplio in1971 and became part
of a group of politically independent left-wing personalities
that glued together the Frente’s fractious constituencies.
The political life of the Frente was put on hold by the 1973
military coup that initiated a long decade of brutal dictatorship.
Leftist intellectuals, together with thousands of activists
and sympathizers, were imprisoned, tortured, and exiled by
the military and prevented from publishing in their own country.
However, some of the exiles, like the novelist and poet Mario
Benedetti who took residence in Spain, became well known throughout
the Spanish-speaking world and beyond.
... This book will be appreciated mainly by those interested in
Uruguay’s cultural and political history. However, it can
also be read as part of a broader narrative about the contribution
of intellectuals to the rise of the left in Latin America
and of the relations between politics and culture everywhere.
It raises a key question that is global in its implications:
Is there a role left for intellectuals in the traditional
European sense of the term in the increasingly professionalized
world of politics, including left-wing politics? In a globalized
world the role of intellectuals continues to be to speak truth
to power. The Frente Amplio has been in office for over half
a decade. It remains to be seen whether Uruguayan intellectuals
are ready to take up this task against a political force that
they so much helped to set up.The Americas

The relationship of intellectuals to political power
has been an important theme since ancient times. It is no
less so today and has been an increasing focus of culture
studies, especially in the Latin American context, where the
history of democratic governance has been spotty at best.
The plague of repression that Latin America experienced in
the 1960s and 1970s also engulfed Uruguay, the country with
the most democratic political culture in Latin America. This
volume seeks to explain the contribution that intellectuals
made to Uruguay’s political process, the frustration of that
process during the military dictatorship (1973-85), and the
opportunities afforded to the intellectual community by the
restoration of democracy and the left’s electoral success
in recent years.
... It has been said that at least until the 1950s, Uruguay’s
political parties lacked intellectuals, and intellectuals
had no political parties. All this changed in the late 1950s
and early 1960s as Uruguay’s economic and political stagnation
led to an increasingly polarized social and political process
resulting in the emergence of a military dictatorship in 1973.
This dictatorship drove most intellectuals into silence and/or
exile.
... Stephen Gregory has done his homework in terms of
reading the output of Uruguay’s intellectuals since the middle
of the previous century. However, tying their output to the
political process and to governing is another matter. This
book is meant for the specialist, but what makes it less accessible
is not its subject matter but the opaque writing style of
the author. Ideas should be exciting, but the too-often stilted
language in this volume does not help bring the ideas to life.
This is unfortunate since the connection of intellectuals
to the left in Uruguay, a left that has now won a second consecutive
presidential election, makes the subject more relevant than
ever. The author knows this and makes a good case for the
importance of his subject, but his style gets in the way.
... Gregory does a good job in reviewing the production
of Uruguay’s intellectuals prior to the dictatorship. He successfully
captures their preoccupation with Uruguay’s stagnation and
the frustrated attempt by these culture workers to convince
their fellow citizens to vote for the left in 1971. The military
then suspended any possibility of intellectuals and the left
having space in the public arena. As Gregory correctly points
out, this would not change until the restoration of democracy
in 1985, but it was the qualitative shift by the left, both
politicians, intellectuals, and ex-guerrillas (including the
current president, José Mujica) that enabled the evolution
of the Encuentro Progresista-Frente Amplio from a minor party
to coequal competitor with the traditional Blanco and Colorado
parties and, since 2004, the majority political force in the
country.
... “Frustrated dialogue” is a good subtitle for this
book. Intellectuals in Uruguay from the 1940s until the early
1960s were frustrated by the generally deaf ear they were
met with on the part of the traditional parties. Just as they
seemed to find a home in the Frente Amplio, the military stepped
in. The revalorization of democracy that was so palpable with
the return of democratic rule in 1985 gave intellectuals a
new opportunity to be heard and have their ideas put into
practice, whether by being adopted by policy makers or practiced
by an intellectual turned policy maker.
... Perhaps the best current example of an academic intellectual
who has made the journey to government is Constanza Moreira,
whose book Final de juego: Del bipartidismo tradicional
al triunfo de loa izquierda en el Uruguay (Ediciones
Trilce, 2004) and other writings on the first leftist presidential
administration established her as one of the country’s top
social scientists. As Gregory indicates, “At the end of her
book on the rise of the Frente Amplio since redemocratization,
Moreira asks whether the left could heal the wounds of a divided
populace and address the ‘Uruguay as a problem’ that provoked
the Frente’s beginnings.” As of March 1, 2010, she is a senator
for the Frente Amplio.
... It remains to be seen whether the potential synergy
between intellectuals and policy makers in the Uruguay of
the second decade of the twenty-first century will result
in a far less “frustrated dialogue” than the author has written
about. His book helps us understand why we should care.Hispanic
American Historical Review